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Episode details

World Service,2 mins

Why scientists are listening to fish 'singing'

The Newsroom

Available for over a year

Recording what's called 'fish chorusing' is a vital element in helping biologists to preserve fish populations. Now a new method has been developed to analyse recordings made under the sea, using machine learning to listen for specific fish sounds. One of the developers of the technique is Ella Kim, a doctoral student at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in San Diego in California. She says one of the the reasons fish sing is in order to find a mate: "kind of like how birds show off their feathers". (Picture: School of fish. Credit: Giordano Cipriani / Getty)

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